General

The General page contains the general server settings, for example, the maximum number of connections, FIPS mode, and banner message.

Figure 4.4. Tectia Server Configuration - General page

Maximum number of connections / Total number of connections / Maximum number of processes

Tectia Server uses a distributed architecture where the master server process launches several servant processes that handle the actual client connections. The server's total number of connections is the number of connections multiplied by the number of processes.

Limiting the maximum number of connections is useful in systems where system overload may be caused by a high load in the server program when opening new connections.

Maximum number of connections defines the maximum number of client connections allowed per servant. The default (and recommended) value is 256.

Total number of connections defines the maximum number of connections that a servant will handle before the server should start a new servant in its place. The value range is 1-4,000,000,000. If no value is given (default), the servant-lifetime functionality will be disabled and the servants are never retired. This corresponds to the servant-lifetime element in the server configuration file, see servant-lifetime.

Maximum number of processes defines the maximum number of servant processes the master server will launch. The value range is 1-2048. The default (and recommended) value is 40.

The maximum number of connections a server can handle depends on system resources, including the maximum number of open file descriptors, the maximum number of processes available to a single user, the maximum number of available PIDs, and the amount of memory available.

Cryptographic library

Tectia Client, ConnectSecure, and Server can be operated in FIPS mode, using a version of the cryptographic library that has been certified according to the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2.

The full OpenSSL cryptographic library is distributed with Tectia Server. However, only the algorithms provided by the fipscanister object module in the library are used by Tectia Server. The OpenSSL FIPS-certified cryptographic library is used to provide the classes of functions listed in the following tables.

The functions from the OpenSSL library version 1.0.2a used on Linux, Windows, Solaris and HP-UX Itanium (IA-64) are listed in Table 4.1. On these platforms, the fipscanister object module version 2.0.9 is used.

The functions from the OpenSSL library version 0.9.8 used on HP-UX PA-RISC and IBM AIX are listed in Table 4.2. On these platforms, the fipscanister object module version 1.2 is used.

The FIPS 140-2 Cryptographic Library is not available for Tectia Server for Linux on IBM System z and Tectia Server for IBM z/OS which do not support OpenSSL FIPS-certified cryptographic libraries. They support hardware acceleration on FIPS cryptographic operations.

Table 4.1. APIs used from the OpenSSL cryptographic library version 1.0.2a (used on Linux, Windows, Solaris and HP-UX Itanium)

API

Description

Functions from OpenSSL

Random numbers

AES/CTR DRBG based on NIST SP800-90A is used from the OpenSSL library.

RAND_get_rand_method()

AES ciphers

Variants: ecb, cbc, cfb, ofb, ctr

EVP_aes*

3DES ciphers

Variants: ecb, cbc, cfb, ofb

EVP_des_ede3_*

Math library

Bignum math library used by OpenSSL.

BN_*

Diffie Hellman

DH_*

Hash functions

Variants: sha1, sha-224, sha-256, sha-384, sha-512

EVP_sha*

Public Key

Variants: rsa, dsa

RSA_*, DSA_*

Table 4.2. APIs used from the OpenSSL cryptographic library version 0.9.8 (used on HP-UX PA-RISC and IBM AIX)

API

Description

Functions from OpenSSL

Random numbers

FIPS-approved AES PRNG based on ANSI X9.32 is used from the OpenSSL library.

FIPS_rand_*

AES ciphers

Variants: ecb, cbc, cfb, ofb, ctr

AES_*

DES ciphers

Variants: ecb, cbc, cfb, ofb

DES_*

3DES ciphers

Variants: ecb, cbc, cfb, ofb

DES_*

Math library

Bignum math library used by OpenSSL.

BN_*

Diffie Hellman

DH_*

Hash functions

Variants: sha1, sha-224, sha-256, sha-384, sha-512

SHA1_*, SHA256_*, SHA512_*

Public Key

Variants: rsa and dsa

RSA_*, DSA_*

No certificate functions are used from the OpenSSL library. Tectia provides its own certificate libraries.

Select the Operate in FIPS Mode check box to use the FIPS-certified version of the SSH cryptographic library. Clear the check box to use the standard (default) SSH cryptographic library.

Note

Tectia Server has to be restarted after changing the FIPS-mode setting. Extra checks are done when starting the Tectia Server and Connection Broker in the FIPS mode due to the OpenSSL FIPS crypto library health check. This will lead to a noticeable delay in the start of the process on slow machines.

Banner message file

To define a banner message file, click the Browse button on the right-hand side of the text field. The Select File dialog appears, allowing you to specify the desired file. You can also type the path and file name directly into the text field.

The message file is sent to the client before authentication. Note, however, that the client is not obliged to show this message.

Login grace time

Specify a time after which the server disconnects if the user has not successfully logged in. If the value is set to 0, there is no time limit. The default is 600 seconds.

User configuration directory

Specify a path to a directory from where Tectia Server looks for user-specific authorized public keys, if they are not stored to the default location. With this setting the administrator can control options that are usually controlled by the user. If no setting is given, the default setting will be used.

The default setting is %D/.ssh2, which expands to %USERPROFILE%\.ssh2 (usually "C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\.ssh2").

Enter the path as a pattern string which will be expanded by Tectia Server. The following pattern strings can be used:

%D or %homedir% is the user's home directory

%U or %username% is the user's login name

For Windows domain users, these strings are substituted differently:

%U is expanded to domain.username

%username% is expanded to domain\username

%username-without-domain% is the user's login name without the domain part.

Note

The User configuration directory setting will be read only if the Authentication view does NOT have anything set in the following settings under Public-Key Authentication:

Specify what kind of user logon methods for the local host are accepted by Tectia Server. The defined logon type affects password authentication. Select a suitable value from the drop-down list: Batch, Interactive, Network, or Network-Cleartext. The default value is Interactive. Note that this setting only affects password-based authentication methods.

For example, to enable accounts that do not have the access right to log on locally, select Network.

For information on the attribute values, refer to Microsoft documentation on Windows logon types.

Resolve client hostname

Define whether Tectia Server should try to resolve the client host name from the client IP address during connection setup. By default, yes is selected and DNS lookups are used to resolve the client host name at connection time.

If you select no, client host name resolution is not attempted, but the IP address is used as the returned client host name. This is useful when you know that the DNS cannot be reached, and the query would cause just additional delay in logging in.

Note

This attribute does not affect the resolution of TCP tunnel endpoints and Tectia Server will try to resolve the client host name when creating a TCP tunnel.

Windows terminal mode

Define the mode of operation of a terminal session on the server side. The available values are Console and Stream.

If set to Console (default), the server reads the screen buffer in a loop and detects modifications based on current cursor location. If set to Stream, the server reads the stdout and stderr of cmd.exe as a stream of data, while providing basic facilities for command-line editing.

Network address family

Define the address family Tectia Server will use for incoming connections.

If set to inet (default), the server will accept only IPv4 incoming connections. If set to inet6, the server will accept only IPv6 incoming connections. If set to Any, the server will accept both IPv4 and IPv6 incoming connections, will resolve addresses of both families, and opens both IPv4 and IPv6 listeners for remote port forwarding.

The inet6 option is not supported for Solaris 9.

User started processes

Select the Terminate on session close check box to have all processes started by the user on the SSH terminal session terminated when the user logs off from the session. By default this is not enabled.